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love seeing everyone's Mouthwashing theories and analysis and just wanted to throw my two cents in, bc Mouthwashing is an amazing game, not only story-wise, but also on a meta level.

!!! SPOILERS FOR MOUTHWASHING, CAN'T PUT A READ MORE ON MOBILE !!!

the game is told from two perspectives: Curly before the crash, Jimmy after the crash. The player controls either one of the two in the corresponding times, and I think the concept of "protagonist" plays a big role here. Before the crash, Curly is the protagonist. He's the captain everyone listens to and tries his best (more or less) to be a leader, a friend, a beacon for everyone. Jimmy is an old friend of his, but ultimately an NPC in Curly's perspective. And the game shows that Jimmy is very jealous of that. He wants to be a big shot too. He wants to be someone others look up to. He wants to "take responsibility".

The crash happens and Curly is left burned and limbless and voiceless and now Jimmy is the protagonist. We, the player, control him and thus we get his very limited and unreliable perspective on everyone else. And Jimmy loves being the "protagonist". The game is even warped story wise so we only learn in the end that it was Jimmy who caused the crash, not Curly. With Jimmy as the protagonist, every other character is subject to his perspective: for example, when Anya locks herself in Medical to end her life, Jimmy influences Daisuke to believe that Anya would kill Curly, although she's shown nothing but compassion and selflessness for the other characters all game. It's easy for the player to get caught up in that, as seen in players being totally fine with drugging Swansea to enter Utility and rarely questioning if the character they're controlling is being reliable or not.

The game being warped through Jimmy's influence also shows itself in other instances: during the one time Jimmy and Anya talk alone in the hallway, Jimmy lashes out at her. He yells about the "tasks" he's been given and the order of them, resulting in the tasks the player can see in the user interface starting to flicker and change according to what he yells. This is showing how meta wise the game is being influenced by Jimmy being the protagonist, having to bend to his will and act accordingly. But we also see the game fight back: during the hallucinatory vent sequence, the player has the option to turn around after seeing a piece of paper that reminds them to "take responsibility" and when turning around and facing away, thus not facing responsibility, the game snaps the player back to face the paper again. It looks like the whole game is a representation of the protagonist struggle between Curly and Jimmy. Curly, the "natural protagonist" is hijacked by Jimmy's actions, making Jimmy the new protagonist of the game. He tries to fulfill the role according to what he thinks he has to do, but he's not good at it, resulting in the game being told out of chronological order, to show the player both sides of the coin.

And even the finale of the game is a representation of the "protagonist struggle" between Jimmy and Curly. In the end, after everyone is dead except them, Jimmy (controlled by the player) takes Curly to the one functioning cryo pod, his last action as a protagonist. Then, in the last scene, the perspectives are switched again. The player looks through the eyes of Curly inside the cryo pod, seeing Jimmy outside ultimately walk to the side and kill himself with a gunshot. As the credits of the game play, the cryo pod is starting to freeze Curly and the player is stuck as him in the pod, ending the game. It shows that Jimmy didn't manage to grow into the role he so desperately wanted, bc his last action as the protagonist is giving away responsibility, directly back to Curly. Jimmy can end the game as an NPC again and avoid taking responsibility, while Curly is the one now faced with an undetermined future, worse off than before.

I hope my ramblings made sense, but I love the game a lot and I hope more people start to analyze the story and other aspects of the game soon!

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A Tiger Amongst Crows

it was about time I drew my favorite haikyuu character of all time, surprise it's lightning incarnate

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mortis.

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star born boy and his guardian spirit 🌟

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I can't save us

based on that one rumour where the script originally had Goncharov and Andrey in a very intense makeout/fight before Andrey commits to the kill

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immortal forever

[part 1 of me finally finishing sketches I made over a year ago]

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Long Live The Freak 🖤

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the biRDS CALL-

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the greatest thief and his eternal foil

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I know I joke a lot about Beowulf and that he's dumb and a himbo and has massive pecs, but rn, at the end of my thesis which includes parts of Beowulf, I have to say I really feel a sort of melancholic kinship for this man. He's regarded by everyone as a classic hero, even by the people in the story, but I can't help but think he's not as classic as we like to believe. He's not humble in any way during his first fights, he's boasting about his strength, daring himself to defeat Grendel without weapons. When Grendel's mother comes to revenge her son his first idea is to run to the lake (?) she lives in to jump in and fight her underwater. He wins in both fights but they make him look so impulsive, battle-hungry even, and not at all like the man you imagine when I say "classic hero". He had to fight even more after this, his entire life is basically ruled by fighting and then he becomes king and grows old and when we see him again he's way over 50, an aging man, who, when faced with the threat of the dragon, feels like he has to do what he always did, fight it. He doesn't even consider sending someone else, because it's always been him, right? It always had to be him who defeats the monsters. And he goes to fight the dragon and the narration already knows that it's his last fight and it's such a sad feeling, seeing this old man, the once young and bragging Beowulf, go to meet his end.

And when he finally lays there dying after dealing the final blow to the dragon with the help of Wiglaf (which, wow, the heroic hero needs direct help defeating his final foe) there's no one else there, and so he gives his rings and with them his kingdom to this young man, the only one who didn't falter and run away after being faced with the dragon (perhaps a new 'Beowulf' in the making?), and then he just dies, a simple man. He doesn't have a wife or children or even close friends he can call out to while dying, he's only ever had fighting, because that it what made him, and now fighting was his ultimate end, because he just had to face one more monster.

And idk, that just makes me feel for him so much. Yeah, he still got sorta inhuman strength as a heroic trait, he always defeats his enemies, when he turns king he of course is a just and good king, but to me, Beowulf is more than just a "classic hero", he is a man born into a world that sees 'being good at fighting' as his highest quality and so he just does that, to the point where he throws himself at any danger or monster he comes across, because he has to, right? If he couldn't fight it, what would be his worth? And it feels so tragic that he ultimately dies alone (Wiglaf doesn't count imo) because no one could keep up with him. Heroism made him what he is, and it made him lonely.

Idk, just my thoughts, I now have to finish my thesis haha

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STINK BOMB ‘最臭兵器’ dir. Tensai Okamura

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wanting to understand Old English lowkey be gay as fuck. like, what do you want to know this dead language for? to read about Beowulf's rock hard abs? to read about Beowulf and his massive pecs and how he defeated Grendel without any weapon? whore.

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🅱️ig 🅱️ara 🅱️iddies

lil sketch to de-stress, featuring Baki wearing one of those cat cutout sweaters

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yeah I watch figure skating, yeah it's amazing, yeah Nathan Chen touched my heart with his Rocketman performance

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my world // my star

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mentally I'm always here:

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tiger in our hearts 🐅